Harry Wouldn't
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, one sided HPGW, oneshot. Ginny knows that Harry wouldn't sneak around on her. It's only one of many things that Harry wouldn't do. COMPLETE.


**Title: **Harry Wouldn't

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, one-sided Harry/Ginny and Michael Corner/Ginny.

**Rating: **R

**Warnings: **Clueless!Ginny, sex, flangst, "eighth-year" fic.

**Wordcount:** 4800

**Summary: **Ginny knows that Harry wouldn't sneak around and hide a secret lover, or even _have _a secret lover in the first place. It's only the first of many things that Harry wouldn't do.

**Author's Notes: **Written for serari_chan's donation to the Hex Files and HP Fandom. She asked for a fic where "Ginny finds out" that Harry and Draco are dating, despite her utter conviction that such a thing is impossible. Here you are, sweetie! I hope it satisfies.

**Harry Wouldn't**

"Oi, Ginny!"

Ginny looked up in surprise. She had been sitting in a quiet corner of the library, pretending to study, but really just whiling away the time until she could find Harry and ask him to eat dinner with her at the Gryffindor table. That sounded less romantic every time she thought about it, but they would have their own private place and ritual at the table. He would offer to feed her things, and Ginny would let him; she would flush, and know that everyone was looking at her, and that would make her flush more. Harry would look at her with patient, tolerant eyes, and smile a bit, and encourage her to eat more. The fantasies were so real that they took over from her notes and books and—

"Ginny!"

Made her jump, like this. Ginny pushed her book out of the way and focused apologetically on Michael Corner, who had been talking to her. "Sorry," she said. "Lost in my thoughts. Was there something you wanted?"

Michael's face turned red. Ginny raised an eyebrow. She hadn't seen Michael around much this year, the "eighth year" for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and the repeated sixth year for Ginny and a lot of other people. She could understand that. They'd fought and conspired together when the Carrows were still in the school, and seeing each other brought up a lot of memories. Some people who'd bonded during the war, like Neville and Hannah, were dating, but others stayed as far apart from their former comrades as they could.

But Michael hadn't struck her as someone who would act _embarrassed _to see her. And he'd approached her first.

"Yes?" she repeated, pushing her hair behind her ear and sitting up attentively, so that he wouldn't think she was daydreaming again. It was rude to daydream in front of someone else. Even someone like Harry, Ginny thought, who would always understand and forgive it. He was good like that, at forgiving. Hell, he'd even extended the hand of friendship to Malfoy their first day back at the castle after summer holidays.

"I had—" Michael said, and then looked at the floor. "I was in Hogsmeade today," he said.

"Oh," Ginny said, remembering then that it was a Hogsmeade weekend. Harry had wanted to go with Ron and Hermione, and Ginny didn't want to force herself into their private time by tagging along, so she'd just stayed here. "So?" she had to add, because the longer she thought about it, the more it seemed like a strange topic for Michael to come and talk to her about.

"I was at Honeydukes." Michael fidgeted with his tie.

"Uh-huh," Ginny said, leaning around him to see if Harry was coming into the library. If Michael was back from Hogsmeade, Harry might be, too.

"I wanted," Michael said, and then kicked at the leg of the table with one foot. That jolted Ginny's books, and worse, it jolted the open inkwell that she'd been using when she remembered to make notes, which wasn't often. The inkwell fell into her lap, and she leaped up, yelping as it rolled down further and stained her robes, her tie, one page of her notes as it fluttered into the ink, and then her shoes and the carpet.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Michael babbled, and flung himself on his knees, scrabbling in the ink and trying to rescue her notes. He blotted another one as Ginny stared at him. _Maybe someone hit him with a Confundus Charm. _"I'll rescue them, I'll just be a minute, they'll be done as soon as I—"

"It's all right," Ginny told him, with the sort of forced patience that Harry used on her when she asked how long it was until he wanted to start dating again. It was very effective, she saw, because it made Michael look up at her with his mouth open. "I'll clean them up. I know you didn't mean to. But I want you to go now."

Michael backed away looking miserable, and then walked out of the library with his head bowed and his tie dripping with ink. Ginny sighed, tried to feel good that at least she wasn't the only one dirty with it, and then bent down and started spelling things clean.

Michael was so _clumsy, _she reflected. She didn't remember him being like that during the war, but then, some boys had a growth spurt when they were seventeen or eighteen and started banging into things like Erumpents.

Harry wouldn't do that. Harry was always graceful. Ginny liked to watch him best on his broom, but since the war, she'd discovered a poetry in the way he walked, stood, leaned against doors or walls, even the way he sat.

She smiled. Daydreams couldn't feed you as well as actual reality, maybe, but they were a nice foretaste of what was to come.

* * *

"Didn't Harry come back from Hogsmeade with you?" Ginny reckoned there were more gracious ways to ask that, but seeing Hermione on the couch, studying for the next week's Potions test, had surprised her so much that the question just came out.

Hermione blinked at her and pushed her hair back with ink-stained fingers—stained in _real _study, Ginny thought ruefully, not the pretense of one. "Oh, yes," she said. "But then he said he had something else to do, and went towards the Quidditch pitch." She turned a page and stared at something on the next one, her jaw dropping open. "That's _not _what Wigglesworth says," she muttered, and began digging through the pile of books at her side.

Ginny sighed and sat down on the couch not far from Hermione, waiting until she had finished flipping back and forth through her pages and triumphantly dashed down a note like a hawk pinning a mouse to the ground. Then she asked, "Did you ever get the impression that Harry isn't very interested in me?"

Hermione froze as though Ginny had asked her an indecent question. Then she turned and looked earnestly at Ginny. "So you've noticed?"

Ginny frowned at her hands. "But he's never said that he wanted to date anyone else," she murmured. "And I can't imagine that he would just leave me hanging if he thought—if he really thought that we would never get back together." She looked up at Hermione. "That's not the Harry you know, is it?" She had to admit, sometimes she resented the fact that her brother and Hermione were so much closer to Harry than she was. _They _got to go with him on the Horcrux hunt, _they _got to fight in the final battle with him, _they _had spent more time with him this summer than she had, even though Harry was staying in the Burrow and ought to have been equally available to them all.

"No, it isn't," Hermione said. She looked away and tapped her quill against her book. "But people change, you know. Especially after a war."

"Not that much," Ginny said. "He didn't look changed this summer. He would have _told _me."

Hermione sighed as though all the winds of the world were in her mouth. "I can't tell you much, Ginny. Maybe you ought to try talking to him and see what he's willing to say." She muttered something else, something that had Harry's name in it, but Ginny didn't hear her as she sprang to her feet.

"I will," she said. "You're right, Hermione. I've been hanging around waiting for him to make the first move, but I can't if he's too nervous. Remember what a disaster it was to wait for him to ask me to the Yule Ball? I have to go after him."

Hermione smiled, but her eyes were sad for some reason. "Yeah, I know. Good luck, Ginny."

Ginny hesitated, because Hermione had sounded almost as though she wanted to tell her something, but she would have come out with it if she did. And a moment later Ginny hurried out of the common room and towards the Quidditch pitch, so Hermione couldn't have interfered even if she wanted to.

* * *

Ginny slowed and looked around as she came to the pitch. Darkness had already fallen, and the lights from the castle looked like warm little candleflames. She cast a _Lumos _and squinted up at the sky, knowing that Harry was sometimes almost invisible against the clouds, as high as he flew.

But there was no one there. Ginny turned carefully in place, shaking her head. If she'd missed him on the way back to the castle, she was going to slap herself.

Then she saw the door of the Quidditch shed standing open, and relaxed. Of course. Harry must have decided to come down when night fell, but he hadn't finished putting away his broom yet. Ginny strode towards the shed, trying to ignore the temptation to pat at her hair. It looked _fine_, she assured herself sternly. There wasn't a lot of wind yet, and she hadn't run that fast to get here.

No lights were on in the shed, but with the charm on her wand, Ginny didn't worry about that. She stuck her hand inside. "Harry?" she called softly.

Someone cursed, and in the far corner, a bunch of brooms fell down. Ginny also heard a muffled banging like a Bludger slamming against the inside of a containing trunk. She ducked prudently and called, "Harry?" again.

"Um, Gin." Harry stepped into the light of her wand, struggling to pull his shirt on. It was more than half-off, Ginny saw with concern, and there were bright red marks along his belly and the bottom of his ribs.

"Oh, Harry!" Ginny reached her hand out to touch one of the marks, but Harry covered it with his shirt and hopped backwards before she could. It must really hurt. "Did one of the Bludgers hit you?"

"Yeah," Harry said, ducking his head. Ginny clucked her tongue.

"You ought to be a better flyer than _that _by now," she said. "Don't you always beat Slytherin when you play them? And they have the second-best Seeker in the school."

Something made a banging noise from further inside the shed, and once again Ginny ducked, because the Bludger that could hit Harry could surely hit her. Harry rested one hand on top of his hair—which was messier than ever; really, did he cast some sort of spell to keep it that way?—and sighed.

"I know," he said. "But it's been a long day, Ginny, and I'm rather tired. Why don't we go back to the castle and get something to eat?"

Ginny smiled at him. Her fantasy of them both sitting in the corner of the table and talking could come true after all. "All right."

Harry turned around and fell over what looked like an invisible broom. Or it could have been the Leg-Locker Jinx, Ginny thought, staring at him, but that would mean someone else was in the shed. She raised her wand high, and still saw no one.

"You're very clumsy today," she said, bending down to help pull him to his feet. "Just like Michael. Are you all going through a growth spurt?"

Harry stared at her in turn. "What?" he asked, getting up and brushing dust off his clothes.

Ginny blushed. On second thought, it had been a little stupid to say that aloud; she didn't know if it was true, and if it _was_, Harry wouldn't appreciate having attention called to it. "Never mind," she said, looping her arm through Harry's. "Forget that I said anything."

He really had taken a beating, she thought in concern, guiding him towards Hogwarts. There were marks on his _neck_, and behind his ears. She hadn't even realized that Bludgers could leave deep, glowing purple bruises like that.

* * *

"Because _Harry _should be the one to tell her."

Ginny paused. She'd come through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room, expecting to find most people in bed. She and Harry had talked for so long at dinner, and then afterwards, that she'd had to run to the library to spend some time finishing up her essay for Charms tomorrow. Harry had watched her go with a pained expression on his face. Ginny knew that he hated parting from her as much as _she _hated parting with him, but there was no help for it.

Ron and Hermione were still awake, though. Her brother was sprawled in the center of one couch, staring gloomily into the flames. Hermione was leaning towards him from another chair, one hand raised. Ginny hesitated in the shadows of the portrait hole. It wasn't nice to eavesdrop, but on the other hand, she wanted to hear what they were saying. She cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself and crept closer to the fire.

"But she won't understand," Ron muttered. "You _know _she won't."

"That doesn't mean she'll take the news any better coming from us." Hermione shook her head so hard that her hair whipped her cheek. Ginny blinked. Hermione tried to avoid that most of the time, so whatever they were talking about must have made her really angry if she forgot. "But I'm not doing Harry's dirty work for him. If he doesn't want to date Ginny, he can tell her himself."

Ginny winced. She should have known it would be something like that. Harry still acted awkward around her and didn't trust her with his wounds.

But then she remembered that pained expression on his face again, and the way he had sat talking with her for so long. Why would he spend time around her and chat to her at all if he was trying to come up with a good way to leave her behind?

No, Hermione must be mistaken. Ginny knew she was one of Harry's best friends and probably knew things about him that Ginny didn't, but on the other hand, Ginny knew things about Ron that she was fairly sure Hermione didn't. No one showed all of themselves to someone else. You were a different person with different people.

"All right," Ron said at last, with a gusty sigh. "If he's the one who has to tell her…I agree. I just hope he does it soon."

Ginny hoped he did, too. On the other hand, she thought she had more recent information on Harry than either her brother or his girlfriend did. So she could hope that they'd mistaken or misunderstood whatever Harry had said he would tell her, and she was the one who had the upper hand and the reason to hope.

She sneaked past them and went to bed. Hermione was leaning with her head on Ron's shoulder, anyway, so they probably wouldn't notice her for a while.

As she was lying in bed, drifting towards sleep, a final worry came to her that they were right and Harry was hiding things from her; she remembered the strange way he had stumbled in the Quidditch shed and how she'd thought there was someone there with him, for a moment. But she dismissed the thought again. Harry wouldn't do something like that, wouldn't cheat on her or lead her on.

* * *

Ginny sighed and leaned against the wall of the corridor that aimed towards the Slytherin part of the dungeons, shaking her head. She didn't understand. She had tracked Harry this far, and then his magical signature, which her spell linked to, had just vanished. It was as if he'd sensed her and ended the spell, or ducked behind a door that had disabling wards on it.

Ginny laughed, then. The only door around here that had wards like that was the Slytherin common room. _As if!_

"I wanted to talk to you."

Ginny spun around with a small shriek, because until then, she had thought she was alone in the dungeons. But Michael Corner was behind her, shifting from foot to foot and looking around anxiously. Probably looking to make sure that there was nothing nearby to trip over, Ginny thought compassionately.

"I wanted," he said. "Um. I had."

Ginny sighed. Michael was sweet, but she didn't want to try placating him, or figuring out what he wanted, when she was _also _trying to figure out what had happened to Harry. "Can it wait?" she asked. "I'm looking for a friend."

Michael had pulled out his wand as though he wanted to conjure something for her, but now he nodded, his head bobbing as ig someone had taken all the air out of him, and put the wand away. "Sure, Gin," he muttered. "I just—I thought—I'd try." And he shuffled away.

Ginny stared after him. _What's wrong with him? He looks as though someone just told him his best friend is dead._

She shivered at the thought, because she _had _seen too many people look like that immediately after the war, and cast another spell that she hoped would point her to Harry. As before, it faded. Ginny chewed the corner of her lip and thought.

Then she remembered the charm that Hermione had been teaching Harry and Ron the other day, trying to prepare Harry for a Potions exam, and smiled. Yes, she'd try that one. She moved her wand in a figure eight and murmured, "_Abluo veneficium._"

The charm swished through and around her and left her skin stinging; it was a cleaning charm that scrubbed away all traces of magic nearby. Hermione had said it was meant to make sure your table was absolutely clean before you tried to prepare a potion, but Ginny thought it would work just as well to make sure that there was no magic distracting her when she tried to find Harry's signature again.

This time, when she cast, she got a faint trace. It was cold and didn't "feel" right when it crossed her wand, which probably meant it was what Harry had left when he passed here hours ago, but that was enough to leave a trail that she could follow. Ginny cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself and slipped away.

Entering enemy territory made her think for a moment of the war, but then she snorted. There was no comparison, not when she thought about it like a rational adult. The only thing she would feel if she couldn't find Harry was disappointed. If she had violated the corridors that the Carrows had told them not to enter during the time they'd been at Hogwarts, she'd have been tortured, perhaps killed.

Hermione seemed to expect her to be a sobbing mess because Harry wouldn't always talk to her, but no one who had survived last year could be, not about such a minor thing.

The trail wove back and forth, now and then ducking into alcoves, then passing out into the middle of the corridor again before darting back to hug the wall. Ginny smiled. Harry had probably come here to play a prank, under his Invisibility Cloak, and strutted straight on for a few minutes before he'd meet a Slytherin and remember where he was. It would do the prank no good if he was discovered before he got there.

And then the corridor bent one final time, and she found herself, after all, before the stretch of blank stone that hid the door of the Slytherin common room.

Ginny swallowed. There was no one there to hear her—at least, not visibly—but she choked back the sound anyway, out of instinct, and then stared at the wall.

What was Harry doing in there? Had he waited until he heard someone say the password and followed them inside to play his prank? Ginny could see him doing that, but—it was dangerous, and McGonagall had been pretty clear about what would happen to students who violated the trust of another House, rather than just hexing someone.

Harry couldn't be here to play the kind of harmless, silly joke Ginny had envisioned. He had another reason for being here. Serious reasons.

Then she remembered the bruises on him the other day, the ones he had said were the result of a Bludger. And she remembered something else someone had said, about seeing Malfoy heading in the direction of the Quidditch pitch that evening.

That was it. Malfoy had hurt him earlier, and Harry was out for revenge. It was understandable why he'd wanted to come down here alone.

Understandable, and absolutely disastrous. McGonagall was a fair Headmistress, and she had been trying as hard as he could not to show favoritism to anyone. Ginny thought she was a bit harder on Harry than she had to be because of that. She might expel him if he really hurt Malfoy, just to show she meant to keep her word.

Ginny was afraid that Harry had already done what he'd came to do, the trail was so cold, but she knew he couldn't have left yet or she would have found a more recent magical signature. So she had to get in somehow and stop him, or at least stop anyone from finding out it was Harry.

Someone was listening to her, or looking out for her—maybe the luck that Harry always said, with an embarrassed little mumble, had been the _actual _reason that he had triumphed over Voldemort, rather than his own power. The common room door swung open, and a second-year student stumbled out, her blinking eyes trying to focus on a paper in front of her. It looked as though she was late for a study session.

She wasn't looking for someone disguised with a Disillusionment Charm. Ginny swept past her, nearly brushing her robe, and found herself in the common room.

Outwardly, it wasn't that much different from the Gryffindor common room except in the colors, but Ginny didn't have time to look for larger differences. She closed her eyes and, concentrating as hard as he could, cast a Point-Me Charm nonverbally. It hadn't worked earlier; Harry had been first too far away and then behind the wards on the common room. But it ought to function when she was inside the same wards as him.

The wand tugged insistently towards the stairs that Ginny knew would lead up to the boys' bedrooms. She groaned, but kept the groan beneath her breath as much as she could, and picked her way across the room. Luckily, there weren't many people around—in fact, suspiciously few, none aside from a boy asleep on a couch and a girl who was so involved in her homework she was probably the Slytherin equivalent of Hermione. It must be closer to curfew than she'd thought.

As she had feared, the wand kept on leading her past all the other doors that Harry could have paused at and aimed straight at the topmost one, behind which would be only two beds, Draco Malfoy's and Blaise Zabini's. Crabbe was dead and Goyle and Nott had chosen not to return this year. Ginny paused with her hand hovering above the knob, chewing her lip. Harry might have managed to get inside unnoticed, but Malfoy and Zabini were probably there, this late at night, and they'd see and question the door opening by itself.

Could she create a distraction that would make them rush out? But no, then they would bump into her on the stairs; those were just too narrow for her to avoid them, and someone brushing against a person under the Disillusionment Charm would _know _that they'd touched a person, rather than thinking that she was a pillow or something.

Perhaps she could ease the door open just a little, spot Harry—or the shimmer of the Invisibility Cloak, which was easy to see if you knew how to look for it—and motion him out. Ginny thought his prank either hadn't taken effect or he hadn't played it yet, because there were no screams.

She checked for hexes on the knob, then tapped it softly. It creaked a little, and her heart rose as she realized that the door wasn't fully shut. This would make it far easier and quieter than trying to open a shut one. She leaned her head around it and ran her eyes quickly over the beds, knowing they would have their curtains drawn, looking for the Cloak.

But both beds' curtains were open. One of them was empty, and neatly-made. Zabini wasn't there.

Ginny would have wondered whether it was Zabini's or Malfoy's, but since the curtains on the other bed were open, she had a much-too-prominent view of Malfoy's pale arse to doubt which one belonged to him.

His _thrusting, _pale arse, driving into the boy under him.

The boy who was Harry, groaning and gripping the sides of the bed as though what Malfoy was doing to him was the—was the most pleasurable experience of his life since his conversation with Ginny the other day.

Ginny just stared. She knew what she was seeing, but had time to notice a lot of details with her eyes before her brain could catch up.

Harry's skin was dotted with sweat and covered with more of those purple "Bludger" bruises—but this time, Ginny recognized them for what they were, the marks of fingers and teeth. Malfoy bent over Harry, resting for a moment, panting, and sweat slid off his body and over the bruises, making them shimmer. Harry twisted around and caught Malfoy's mouth in a kiss, and the sheets were bright against them as they writhed together, the dark and the pale, the dark and the light, the Slytherin and the Gryffindor, the boy she fancied and the boy she hated.

Then Ginny's brain caught up, and she couldn't help sobbing.

But the sob coincided with Malfoy roaring like a bull as he pumped his hips forwards, and Harry cried out under that—not like someone who was humiliated at what had just ended up in his arse, not at all like that—and Ginny had to run, taking the stairs down as carefully as she could while tears blinded her.

* * *

Harry wouldn't do something like that.

Except that he had.

Harry wouldn't fuck a boy, or let a boy fuck him.

Except that he _had_.

Ginny sat on a couch in the Gryffindor common room. Everyone else had gone to bed, and since she was still under the Disillusionment Charm, no one had noticed that she was sitting here, gazing at the embers of a dying fire.

Dying like her heart.

Now she understood what Ron had wanted to tell her, and why Hermione had said that they had to wait. First of all, Harry should have told her. He _should _have. Harry wouldn't be a coward, except when he was.

Second, Ginny wouldn't have believed them if they _had _mentioned it. Fucking Malfoy? Harry? No. Not really. Not _her _Harry.

Ginny sniffled and rubbed at her nose.

But she only really had two options now. Well, three, if she wanted to ignore what her eyes and other senses had told her and pretend that Harry's liaison with Malfoy didn't exist. But no, _she _wasn't that kind of person. There were some things Ginny wouldn't do.

She could wait and hope that Harry would come back to her. Surely Malfoy couldn't satisfy him forever? He would want a family and a girlfriend eventually. She could be there for him when it happened.

Or she could move on and maybe scream at him if she wanted to, or drop a coolly contemptuous look on him when he finally got up the courage to talk to her. She could find someone else.

For the first time, it occurred to her that Michael Corner might have a different reason for being clumsy around her than a growth spurt.

Ginny sat up straight and took such a deep breath that it made her feel as if she would float off the couch. She wanted to find Michael and talk to him. She would talk to Harry when he came to her, and not sooner, because she needed time to decide what she would say.

But she wouldn't sit around waiting for Harry to decide the course of her life. She _wouldn't._ She might only be seventeen and not allowed to fight in wars because her mum said so, but she knew that much.

There were a whole lot of things that Harry wouldn't do, but that Ginny Weasley _would_.

**The End.**


End file.
